Archive for the 'scuba' Category

Another work trip, with, of course, a little free time. Not so much this time – work kind of gets in the way sometimes – but i made the best use of what time I had! Unfortunately I got sick, some sinus thing, and also was very busy so had to curtail my diving – but I did get to go once.

I’ll put a few images up front with captions underneath. Click to enlarge. To see them all, browse the gallery below.

The California coast over LA

The island of Oahu, seen at last after hours of empty ocean. Kauai is in the background.

Oahu’s north shore, near “the pipeline” which has such great surf waves.

A surfer on Oahu’s north shore. A few days prior there were record, 40-foot waves, but on this day it was less dramatic.

Beach goers on the north shore. Those waves are something else! The sea is something to be reckoned with here.

At Kaena point, on the northwest corner of the island where the trade winds hit the shore, the scenery is dramatic and, for the foolish, quite deadly.

Near Kaena point, to the north.

Near Kaena point, to the south. This wave was 30 feet tall, but since there’s no perspective, it’s impossible to tell. You can stand there without seeing one of these monsters for a few minutes, and it can sneak up and get you. If you go, pay attention to the rocks; is there water in the holes? If so, watch out.

Look at the water’s color where the sun strikes through this wave.

Kaena point, looking south. This is a fantastic hike, specially if you go at a time with few people. There was almost nobody there when I went, and it was magical. I have visited a few times over the years, and it always delivers.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, whales started leaping out of the water. later they came very close, but it was too dark to photograph. A pod of Dolphins and a monk seal were also present.

This animal, named the humuhumunukunukuapua’a, is the state fish, and yes I can pronounce this!

At the Pearl Harbor visitor’s center, you can see the Missouri at left and the Arizona memorial to the right. I have visited both of these in the past, but not this time.

A Japanese torpedo, found in the mud in the 1990s. It was intact, but after the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) people finished with it, it was damaged, as they had to blow it up.

The USS Bowfin, a highly decorated submarine.

Up periscope!

USS Bowfin submarine

USS Bowfin submarine

USS Bowfin submarine’s engine room

USS Bowfin submarine aft torpedo room

The 5″ deck gun, used to sink many vessels. DO not forget, if you enjoy this kind of thing – as I do – that these vessels represent not only bravery and performance of duty in the face of hardship, but that also they are the instruments of death, used in a grim struggle. War is hell.

The California coast over LA

The island of Oahu, seen at last after hours of empty ocean. Kauai is in the background.

A Japanese torpedo, found in the mud in the 1990s. It was intact, but after the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) people finished with it, it was damaged, as they had to blow it up.

At the Pearl Harbor visitor’s center, you can see the Missouri at left and the Arizona memorial to the right. I have visited both of these in the past, but not this time.

Up periscope!

The USS Bowfin, a highly decorated submarine.

USS Bowfin submarine

USS Bowfin submarine

USS Bowfin submarine’s engine room

USS Bowfin submarine aft torpedo room

The 5″ deck gun, used to sink many vessels. DO not forget, if you enjoy this kind of thing – as I do – that these vessels represent not only bravery and performance of duty in the face of hardship, but that also they are the instruments of death, used in a grim struggle. War is hell.

A Poseidon missile with 14 warhead sockets. Imagine the death this thing could cause; it chilled my blood. Now think of how many of these (or their modern equivalent) still exist.

Waikiki sunset

Oahu’s north shore, near “the pipeline” which has such great surf waves.

Beach goers on the north shore.

A surfer on Oahu’s north shore. A few days prior there were record, 40-foot waves, but on this day it was less dramatic.

Near Kaena point, to the north.

Near Kaena point, to the north. This wave was 30 feet tall, but since there’s no perspective, it’s impossible to tell. You can stand there without seeing one of these monsters for a few minutes, and it can sneak up and get you. If you go, pay attention to the rocks; is there water in the holes? If so, watch out.

At Kaena point, on the northwest corner of the island where the trade winds hit the shore, the scenery is dramatic and, for the foolish, quite deadly.

Look at the water’s color where the sun strikes through this wave.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, whales started leaping out of the water. later they came very close, but it was too dark to photograph. A pod of Dolphins and a monk seal were also present.

Note the specialized nostril lips.

A Green sea turtle off of Hawaii Kai, on the southeast corner.

This guy has a tumor, poor dude.

Often seen, always enjoyed – a yellow moray eel, looking scary.

A yellow moray.

This animal, named the humuhumunukunukuapua’a, is the state fish, and yes I can pronounce this!

Kaena point, looking south. This is a fantastic hike, specially if you go at a time with few people. There was almost nobody there when I went, and it was magical. I have visited a few times over the years, and it always delivers.

On the tail end of a work trip to Hawaii, I tacked on a few days for myself. The goal: scuba diving. There’s a lot of things to do on Oahu, and it’s hard to make a choice, but I focused almost entirely on diving. Still, I have pictures from around the island – it’s so beautiful, I just can’t help myself.

One of the things I love about flying to Hawaii is how no matter what time it is, you can go to the beach, and that’s always what I do. Nothing washes away the combined filth and exhaustion of air travel like the ocean. Here’s some scenes from Waikiki:

On another day I wandered around Kakaako beach park, which has a lot of stray cats (and stray people):

Here’s some random images of the shoreline on the east side:

Here’s one from the north shore, where a 40-knot wind fueled perfect, mach-1 windsurfing:

…and finally, of course, the diving! I was having camera problems, so my color balance and image quality were all messed up.

Here’s the outflow pipes at electric beach, which I dived with new friends Zack, Heather and Daniel.

Clouds of fish in the warm outflow.

From another dive, some crappy pictures of sharks… I was playing with a new camera and didn’t do very well.

Some other reef scenes:

…and a lot of other images you can look through if you are so inclined.

Here are some pictures taken on a recent trip to Kauai. I always meet such great people when I travel & dive, and this was no exception. Diving sites were Koloa landing, tunnels beach and some boat diving around Sheraton caverns.

You may notice that the collection is a bit turtle-heavy. I like turtles. Deal with it.

Sheraton caverns was by far the most interesting, with lots of life and interesting terrain, but not so far off shore that a long boat ride is required. Tunnels is a great beach, and near some other interesting things to do on shore, but I found it rather barren for the most part. This is probably due to the violent wave action that makes this site undiveable in the winter. The cleaning station in the shallows was fantastic; if you find it, stay there – it’s the coolest thing you’ll find there, I think. I found the tunnels (rock formations with a lot of swim-throughs) marginally interesting. I’d probably like them better if I went with just one other diver. Koloa landing is a good practice/reintroduction site, and a great way to start out a week of diving after not being in the water for a few months. Although not super awesome like Sheraton caverns, there was a lot of life and it was really easy to get in and out, both in terms of diving and arriving by car.

By the way, they are not called green because of their color – which is not really green – but because of their fat, which is green in color (people used to eat a lot of turtles). Some green turtles are, in fact, green, but this is because of algae. In true color, they are yellow/brownish-orange. The color distortion at depth makes them look green in some photos, but this is misleading. The next two pictures show this effect.

Here is a non-color-corrected image:

…and here is one taken with a flash, to show true color (and algae growth):

These next few images are close to the surface and the color is pretty accurate. I’ve never seen so many adult turtles in one place. Like all reef animals that want cleaning, they hang motionless in a slightly head-up position, flippers out. This body posture is a signal to the cleaners, who come up to do their job.

An injured, sick-looking turtle with a completely algae-encrusted carapace. If I had seen it in Florida, I would have alerted the turtle hospital, but I don’t know who to speak to about this in Hawaii. Note the crushed portion of its shell near the left shoulder.

Another green turtle.

A green moray eel, which is really green.

A spotted pufferfish. these guys are hard to photograph, because they move so rapidly and are shy.

Trumpetfish.

Sheraton Caverns

This area is so named because a) it’s off-coast of a Sheraton and b) there are some lava caves and swim-throughs in the area. Turtles (yes, more turtles) like to rest in the caverns. Drowsily perched on the stone blocks, flippers hanging carelessly, they resemble bored people waiting at a bus stop. Like many reptiles, they don’t have the necessity to constantly respirate like us mammals; the simply stop breathing when water makes it inconvenient. Lodging themselves in the rocks, they doze off. It makes me consider the alien lives of other animals. Can you imagine an existence in which breathing was more like eating – something you needed to do, but could be put off for long periods of time?

It was pretty exciting to drop into the cavern and find it filled with turtles, none of whom seemed particularly concerned with my presence.

Another of my favorite animals is the octopus. They are very hard to find, specially in daytime; here is one hidden away in its crevice. This one is called the day octopus, for the simple reason that it is a rare type that can be found out and about in daylight hours. Can you see it? It is camouflaged not only by color, but by texture; an octopus can change either at will. It is in the center right, a brown, rough-surfaced object.

Here it is a little more obvious, apparently menacing a banded cleaner shrimp. By this time the octopus has changed color and texture.

Shrimp is definitely on the menu for the day octopus, but either it wasn’t hungry, or it was scared by me, and it retreated into its lair.

Here are images that show what it’s like to explore the reef system. It is another planet than the one surface dwellers have experienced. Life forms as strange as fiction are the norm; plant and animal shapes are sometimes reversed; seemingly dull colors erupt into flaming glory when you get closer or shine a light on them, and tiny fairyland animals inhabit innumerable crevices. Every surface writhes with life, and countless eyes watch you move about, assessing you as a threat and a source of protein. Some animals don’t need to see you; they can feel your heart beat directly through electric fields. From Seussian landscapes, they consider their options, and your future.

A typically small school of yellow goatfish float placidly in shallow water; an initial phase stoplight parrotfish (red and white) feeds; soft coral sways in the current, and clouds of small fish conduct business as usual.

A sinister-looking stonefish sits on the bottom; they are almost invisible. Although poisonous, they are gentle (to divers) creatures who only wish to be left alone, like most sea life.

A school of blue tang flow over the reef and around me.

My dive buddy floats placidly above the reef at 80 feet. Every diver is a dirigible of sorts.

A squid hunts within 20 feet of the surface. It’s transparent body made it almost invisible, so I used a flash to highlight it against the underside of the sea’s surface. After I took this picture, it changed color from transparent to brownish-red, and then to violet, before jetting off faster than I could swim.

A small “green” sea turtle. The shell is reddish, but seen up close in better light, the skin has a greenish color.

Scrunched up into its daytime hiding place, an octopus eyes me suspisciously. It has the ability to take on almost any color, and even some textures.

Bluestriped grunts peer curiously into my mask.

A trumpetfish hunts amongst the soft corals, hanging vertically as they are wont to do, hoping to be taken for a frond of coral.

It’s often said of Bonaire that there’s nothing to do there besides dive. I understand this sentiment, but I think it shows a lack of imagination. First of all, it’s a foreign country with its own ways and styles; it’s not a cruise ship island, and it’s not “disneyfied.” So there is a culture to be explored. Because so much of the island is undeveloped, there is a lot of forest to walk through; if you’re interested in birding, and in zoology generally, there is a lot going on here. Iguanas and skinks rustle through the grass; interesting insects buzz around (including lots of mosquitos), and birds not usually found in North America flitter about.

Bonaire has some serious relief – I think it’s highest point is about 800 feet; you can go rock climbing. Plus, there are caves everywhere. That’s right, caves. On a geological time scale, the island is dissolving like alka-seltzer. Bonaire has risen and fallen many times, as has the sea, leaving terraces that used to be shallow off-shore sandy bottom or reef.

The caves are a well-kept secret. Everyone knows about them, but they are not widely publicized. I think that this is because of the danger to tourists, and also because the delicate caves would be destroyed by too much unfettered exploration. There are a handful of people on the island that are cave specialists and can take tourists into the caves for a fee; ask at your hotel or look on the net.

I didn’t have much time to visit the caves, so I chose to explore what was within sight of daylight; I didn’t even have a flashlight. Sometimes, you just have to leave something juicy for the next trip! My buddy Jeff and I collected as much information as we could, and putting together scraps of info from here and there, managed to get ourselves in the region where the most accessible cave is located.

Go to the Carribbean club and park in the dirt lot across the street, which also services the offices of a unit of the Bonaire ecological services agency (I can’t recall if it’s the marine park or something else; it’s not visible from the street, although you will see signs). This is just inland (and uphill) of the oil slick leap dive site. If you walk into the bush at the back of this dirt lot, you will find a cement marker, the kind used around the island to denote something significant:

The marker is telling you about a cave revealed by a sinkhole – the collapsed roof of a large chamber in a cavern.

Steps lead down into the opening, which is about half an acre in size. There are a lot of crevices to explore; some of them must lead deep into the island’s network of tunnels. This one’s a good candidate:

But even without going deep into the earth, you can spend a good amount of time here. A lot of what used to be deep within the earth is now lit by the sun; I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Jeff is in this picture, and a few others as well.

Here you can see the trees and sun with stalactites framing the view!

This is not an area to be taken lightly; there are innumerable opportunities for spine-damaging injuries. Flip-flops are probably not a good idea. If you’re really going to explore, long pants and gloves, and of course multiple light sources and a nice long reel, would be important, as would be notifying someone where you’re going and when you intend to be back. The only thing worse than lying injured and helpless in a cave would be knowing that nobody knew where you were.

One odd thing about this cave: it was hot down there. Most caves are cooler than surface ambient temperatures; this one was definitely hot and stuffy. So in addition to the other things, a lot of water is necessary if you go inside. But as you can see, you dont need to go in to see neat cave sights – I didn’t have a flashlight and never went further than sunlight could penetrate.

Bonaire is riddles with caves, but most are inaccessible and of course some are under water. Wandering around in the woods north-west of the Caribbean club, we found this one, which would be easy to miss. Buried deep in the brush and accessed only by an unremarkable dirt road no different than dozens of others, you come across this:

What’s that? You don’t see it? Well, it’s that dark shadow in the bushes on the right side of the picture. Hidden in the brush, surrounded by the sound of furiously escaping lizards, is a yawning hole – another collapsed chamber, perhaps 40 feet deep.

This one’s pretty hard to get in to; you’d need to take unsafe chances climbing down the trees that are growing at the bottom, and your best bet would be to rappel down. Due to the thorny, dense underbrush, access is non-trivial. I’m not sure what you’d anchor to, because the trees have shallow root systems and mostly are just bushes. I think you’d need to hammer a piton into the coral limestone., which is brittle and perhaps unreliable. Chafing gear and perhaps surface support would be necessary.

A final note for the prospective spelunker: The caves are uncharted, deserted, dangerous, hot, filled with sharp coral and there is no doubt that it is dangerous to explore them. Take precautions, hire a guide, or consider exploring just the entrances, which is plenty exciting.

Most of the time, eels are pretty hard to find. This chain moray is trying not to be seen.

This reticulated moray shows its bad dentition.

A goldentail moray undulates amongst the reef.

Here’s one I had never seen before: a goldspotted eel. These active animals don’t seem to stop moving, and have the ability to disappear into the reef like a drop of water hitting a paper towel.

Parrotfish are very common, but they also don’t stop moving (in the daytime, anyway). They are fun to watch because they are amazingly colored, they are very active, and they’re not that frightened of divers. You can watch them feed on algae, and often see them shit out the sand that they generate (see my other posts on this topic). As parrotfish mature, they change appearance so radically that they are hardly recognizable as the same fish. All of the images below are stoplight parrotfish (although different individuals).

The lionfish is native to Indonesia, from where it was imported to the US decades ago as an aquarium fish. Someone released it, and it spread like wildfire starting with Florida. Now it is all over the Caribbean. It can eat up to 90% of the native fish larvae in reefs it inhabits and has no known natural predators in this hemisphere; that’s a recipe for disaster. In addition, those beautiful spines deliver very painful stings to anyone who disturbs them. Awesome, no?

They are gorgeous creatures, but they must be killed. They are the only animal you’re allowed to hunt in Bonaire, but to get permission to do so, you have to take a class and use only the spear guns sold by the Bonaire wildlife management people. Next time I go, this might be a cool thing to do; I could have taken down a dozen of them. I’ve never killed anything under water but this is a noble cause, albeit perhaps a phyrric one.

There is one publicly accessible wreck dive on Bonaire – the Hilma Hooker. We were told a fascinating story about this wreck: that it was used for drug smuggling, and was impounded by authorities on Bonaire a fter its crew of three (for a ship of this size, incredible!) anchored it in the wrong place because they were having “technical difficulties.” Soon, it sank under mysterious circumstances, and after some hand-wringing, it was decided to leave it there and prep it for divers. So it looks like an intentionally sunk artificial reef, but it’s a little more than that.

It’s a large vessel – a bulk cargo carrier, perhaps 250 feet long. It sits on the bottom at about 100 feet, almost capsized, on its starboard side. There’s not much growth on it, but it is fun enough, and sits right next to a great reef extending upwards from 90 feet to the shallows. This means that instead of wasting your time rising up through the water column, you can leave the wreck after, say, using up a third of your gas, and spend a nice relaxing long time exploring the reef as you outgas nitrogen. My dive was a little over an hour, but I had enough gas for half again that long – so you can dive a long time here even though it’s initially deep. There is so much stuff in the shallows, it’s fantastic. But then, all of Bonaire is like that! no need to go deep, for the most part.

A big tarpon wanders by.

The view from within the amidships hold.

Seeing a large vessel materialize out of the gloom is always a little creepy. There’s something atavistically frightening about the thing looming towards you.

Rising up the adjacent reef wall, the upturned hull is just barely visible.

Since these pictures are all of tiny things, let me remind you that you can click on them to get a larger image.

One of my favorite things is to find cleaning stations and submit myself for a thorough treatment. If I’m lucky, a cleaner shrimp will pick over my fingers. In my experience, only shrimp will do this to people, although if you’re a fish, you get service from all kinds of tiny fish as well as shrimp.

Here is a Peterson’s shrimp, which is mostly invisible and so tiny you’d miss it entirely if not for its neon blue stripes. There’s some physical comedy in the jaunty way these guys will hop onto your finger like a Navajo brave hopping onto the back of a wild pony. They’ll comb over the crevices in your skin, picking off little flakes and debriding cuts and scrapes with unbelievable precision. They never hurt you.

These little guys usually live within the protective tentacles of a corkscrew anemone, which mirrors the shrimp’s mostly transparent body, but has white highlights that seem to hover like a cloud of zebra-striped marshmallows. I love how the Peterson shrimp’s eyes bobble about and pop frantically in and out as it cleans them in the shrimp equivalent of blinking.

Here’s a close-up of a corkscrew anemone, without the shrimp. They are really super-transparent.

Check out this tiny little secretary blenny, maybe 5 millimeters high and only a few centimeters long. It was popping in and out of its hole to grab its even tinier plankton prey. It looks like a character from the Simpsons.

Here is a bouncy little boxfish juvenile, which swims in any direction it chooses seemingly without moving any part of its body, like a perfectly hovering and nimble dirigible.

I love the furious “expression” on this fish’s face (a type of damselfish, I think). He’s about an inch long, and fast.

The prime paradox of coral reefs is that although they’re huge, they’re made by tiny animals. Check out the polyps on this one (sounds kind of filthy!). They look like, and pretty much are, little anemones with special capabilities.

Another coral paradox is how the machine-like regularity of identical polyps gives rise to sinuous, organically non-linear patterns and sensuously curved surfaces.

Christmas-tree worms like to live in coral heads.

These tube sponges look like something Dr. Suess would have drawn. A number of different species of sponge have this long, tube-like form. They aren’t small, but since they provide such a convenient place to live, small things live inside of them.

The last thing I have to show you today is this lettuce sea slug, a beautiful creature saddled with an ungraceful name.